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NSO and Unisys launch project to improve issuance of NSO documents

Release Date:

Wednesday, June 28, 2000

President Joseph Estrada was the guest of honor in the launching of the Civil Registration System Information Technology Project held in MalacaÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â±ang recently. CRS-ITP is an undertaking of the National Statistics Office in partnership with Unisys, Philippines. It is targeted at improving the issuance of copies of certifications of birth, death, marriage and other similar documents.

Estrada commended the NSO for its efforts to increase efficiency in the Philippine bureaucracy for better government performance. The project, he added, will "address the perennial problem on storage and retrieval of records" and will help "eradicate fixers who take advantage of co-Filipinos." He also congratulated the NSO as well as its mother agency, the National Economic and Development Authority, and Unisys, Philippines for forging into a partnership that will help promote "an environment conducive to foreign investment."

NSO administrator Tomas Africa said that upon full implementation of the project, clients will be able to obtain their certificates within 30 minutes in the Metro Manila and within two hours at the regional and provincial outlets. CRS-ITP will also provide inherent security features that will further minimize fraud and fabrication of civil registry documents.

A central facility will be established at the NSO Manila and 84 CRS outlets nationwide. The project will digitize more than 110 million documents currently held by the NSO in its archives. Midway through the project, conversion of all civil registry documents coming from the local civil registry offices will commence to update the database and to maintain an almost complete record of all civil registry documents.

The project will also establish a wide-area network infrastructure to support the communication requirement of all other outlets nationwide.

The CRS-ITP will be developed and maintained by Unisys, Philippines, the project proponent selected through the build-operate-transfer bidding process. The computerization project is estimated to cost P2.12 billion, but it will be at no cost to the government.

The project begun in the first semester of 2000 and by mid-2001 the central facility and five Metro Manila outlets will already open for transactions. Its full implementation, in other NSO regional and provincial offices nationwide, is expected to be completed in the next 36 months.